Question: I am doing my Bachelor’s degree in engineering from IIT (Indian Institute of Technology). My branch is Electrical Engineering and I have an aggregate score of 70%. What are my prospects for admission and financial assistance in the US or Canada as I hail from India?

Answer: Your academic performance is reasonably good, particularly since you are attending a prestigious institution. You would be required to take the GRE (Graduate Record Exam), a standardized entrance exam, to pursue a Master of Science (MS) in Engineering in the US.

The GRE consists of 3 parts: Quantitative, Analytical and Verbal. Each part is scored on a scale of 800; and, thus the maximum score of 2400. Its impact on the admissions decision depends on the aggregate score as well as the composition of its constituent parts. For example, engineering students tend to perform quite well on the Quantitative part, not as well on the Analytical part and worse yet on the Verbal part. Schools tend to equalize for this variation by assessing individual parts.

You must do extremely well in the GRE, and then your chances of getting admission and financial assistance in the US are good. Note that getting admission is much easier than obtaining financial assistance: you may want to balance your desire to attend the most reputable school with your need for financial assistance, if any. You would probably want to select 1 to 2 schools from each of the extremely and moderately competitive categories. You may want to target 3 to 5 schools from the category. You would probably have to limit the number of schools you target because each schools requires an application processing fee of $50 to $100. In Chapter 3 we will show you how to select a target school.

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